In the course of their conquests, however, the Mohammedan Arabs captured the Greek cities of Asia Minor. They were brought closely in contact with Greek culture, Greek literature, and Greek thought. As has always been the case, captive Greece took its captors captive. What happened to the Romans earlier came to pass also among the Arabs. Inspired by Greek philosophy, science, and literature, they became ardent devotees of science and the arts. While not inventing or discovering anything new, like the Romans they carried on the old. Damascus, Basra, Bagdad, Bokhara, Samarcand all became centres of culture and of education. Large sums were paid for Greek manuscripts, and for translations from them. Under the famous Harun al-Raschid, at the end of the eighth century, whose name is better known to us than that of any others, because of the stories of his wandering by night among his people in order to see if justice were done, three hundred scholars were sent at the cost of the Caliph to the various parts of the world in order to bring back treasures of science, and especially of geography and medicine. It is an interesting historical reflection that the Japanese and Chinese are doing the same thing now. The Arabs were very much taken by the philosophy of Aristotle, and it became the foundation of all their education. Greek thought, as always, inspired its students to higher things. Soon everywhere in the dominions of the Caliphs, philosophy, science, art, literature, and education nourished. Medicine was taken up with the other sciences and cultivated assiduously. Freind, in his "Historia Medicinae," says that the writings of the old Greeks which treated of medicine were saved from destruction with the other books at Alexandria, for the desire of health did not have less strength among the Arabs than among other nations. Since these books taught them how to preserve health, and were not otherwise contrary to the laws of the Prophet, that served to bring about their preservation. Freind also calls attention to the fact that grammars and books which treated of the science of language were likewise saved from destruction. Besides the library, the Arabs, after their conquest of Alexandria in the eighth century, came under the influence of the university still in existence there.